Diggs Duke Breaks Down New Soulful EP “The Upper Hand and Other Grand Illusions”

“A Private Island”

“I was trying to channel Michael Jackson. I wasn’t really doing the noises, but the rhythm and the tempo. I was thinking about Michael because I grew up on the Bad album. Being from Gary, one of the first records my parents gave me was Bad. That song is about being broke and still trying to take somebody out and get to know them. The idea that everything in life costs money, but you’re still trying to operate on a more spiritual level of getting to know somebody. The last lyric is, ‘You handle it with quite such grace/then I can still look you in your face;’ it’s like, ‘Thank you for not making fun of me because I’m so broke and letting us just connect like this.'”